Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #120 Mahu Lounge – Ypsilanti MI

There’s a waterfall in the shower!

Kurt and Lance live in a small town east of Detroit. It’ called Ypsilanti and I have no idea how to pronounce it! Downstairs in the basement of Kurt and Lance’s home you will find the Mahu Lounge but what’s unique about their home tiki bar is that it expands into different rooms. A bedroom adjacent to the bar has been turned into the The Dirty Pearl VIP Champagne Room. The tiki has also moved into the downstairs bathroom as well. They never use the shower so they put a waterfall in it! Great idea! Here is the story of the Mahu Lounge and The Dirty Pearl VIP Champagne Room…

What is the tiki scene like where you live

Kurt- Apparently, it’s thriving! Before we started I knew of one person that had a home tiki bar in southeast Michigan.  Since making an IG for our bar we’ve discovered there are a lot more than we’d ever thought.  We recently met Art, Maria and Ed randomly this summer at a bar in our town of Ypsilanti.  Since then we’ve joined the Detroit Friends of Tiki and have started to meet more people in the area.  Before that we didn’t know many people at all.  As far as tiki bars, we have the Max’s in Grand Rapids and Mutiny in Detroit.  We liked going to Lost River on Detroit’s east side, but sadly it closed.  So, we have two tiki bars and we heard there’s a new one opening in South Lyon, which we’re pretty excited about because that’s not too far from us.

What brought you into the tiki lifestyle and how long has it been part of your life?

Kurt- Besides being intrigued by tiki since the 90’s, I’d have to honestly say the drinks and the Covid shutdown is what really got us going full speed ahead.  So, it’s been since about 2019.
 

Can you give a little history of how it all came together?

Kurt- I caught the collecting bug early and I started going to flea markets and junk stores when I was in high school.  Although Hawaiian and tiki stuff wasn’t my main thing, I would pick up old tiki mugs for like a couple a bucks, I always thought they were cool. That then evolved into buying any kind of Hawaiian or Polynesian art or trinkets, Martin Denny and any other albums, coco joe’s and stuff like that.  

My husband Lance and I met in 2016, and we would stop by Chin’s Chop Suey on the way home from my sister’s house every once in a while…just having an app and a drink or two and just thinking how cool it was in there and wishing we could have been able to go into the Chin Tiki downtown.

Then we’d heard about Mutiny opening and we soon found ourselves there any chance we could.  Detroit is about a 25, 30 minute drive from Ypsi, so if we were going to see a band we always stopped there on the way home and sometimes we’d just drive out there and get tacos and then go have drinks.

Then Lost River opened and we now had two tiki places to go to!  Two James used to make a Dr. Bird Lost River edition and we would drive out there just to get that.  Even during shutdown, you could order it online and drive up and someone would run it out.

Then Max’s South Seas Hideaway opened and we we’re blown away!  Even though that’s about a two and half hour drive from us, we still managed to get out there a few times before Covid happened.  

So, we had gotten used to enjoying some pretty tasty drinks.  Then the covid shutdown happened in March.  Lance works at the VA Hospital, so he had to go to work, but for me cutting hair, I was off till who knew when!  We started saying that we missed going to the tiki places and having those awesome drinks.  Then we thought we’d just get some rum and some mixers and make em at home.  We quickly learned that that wasn’t so easy and we pretty much need an arsenal of stuff we didn’t have.  Like a cocktail shaker for starters.

Lance bought the Smugglers Cove book and we thought, “here we go, let’s make something out of this!”  It might just be us, but that book seemed really intimidating to us at the time… like it still wasn’t as easy as we thought and full of ingredients we’d never heard of.  Then we bought the combo Beachbum Berry book, which seemed a little easier for us, dusted off some mugs I’d had for 30 years and we were off!

We started thinking we should get some “cool new” mugs and then we couldn’t stop buying them.  We were living in a one bedroom apt with a boston terrier and a puppy that grew to be 100 lbs.  We found an old hutch and we were using that to put our booze and mugs in.  Then we found a vintage 3 ft. tiki, then we found another one.  Then we got a 7 ft. tiki from a guy that bought it from Mark Sellers’ sale.  We were outgrowing our already filled tiny apt at a pretty good clip.

We then figured we wanted to have our own tiki bar and we needed to buy a house.  We bought our house in 2021 and it had a pretty good sized finished basement compared to everything else we had seen.  So even before we started to look at houses we started buying stuff we knew we’d need, like a vintage bar (we’re not very construction handy) rattan furniture, lamps, fake plants and all that.  I swear we would think of something and look it up on Facebook marketplace and we would find it super cheap and not too far away.  We had filled up two storage units and were spreading out in the basement of our apt building.

So, in June 2021 we moved in and the first and really only thing we’ve done to our house was to paint the basement and get that ready.

Any story behind the name of your bar?

Kurt- The full name of our bar is  Mahu Lounge and The Dirty Pearl VIP Champagne Room.

I wanted to have some kind of gay name for the bar.  Dirty Pearl was the first thing we both liked.  Then I found the word Mahu, which is a term used in native Hawaiian and Tahitian to describe a third gender that encompasses both male and female spirits.  In modern usage, it’s used as a derogatory word for LGBTQ people.  Native Americans have a similar thing and in both cultures, they are revered people.

Our basement had a bedroom as part of the finished area.  We used to use that as storage until we needed more space.  So, naturally we took the door off, painted it and hung some beads in the doorway and that is now the Dirty Pearl VIP Champagne Room.  It was supposed to be just the Dirty Pearl Annex or something, but I figured let’s just add the VIP Champagne Room because it ridiculous and fun to say.
 

What is your favorite Tiki drink and what is your favorite Tiki bar

Kurt- Lance’s favorite drink is the Fog Cutter because of the potency.  My favorite drink at home is the Smugglers Cove Planters Punch because it just tastes delicious and it’s also the only drink I have memorized.  If I’m out and about my favorite drink is a Zombie because I didn’t have to make it.

We have a soft spot for Chins because for us that’s kind of where we got the first spark for our own bar, plus it’s such a connection to the past.

Outside of great drinks, what do you think are essential elements in creating the perfect Tiki environment?

Kurt- I’d say for us it’s lots of low interesting lighting, the music, and all the eye candy!

What does the future hold for you and your home tiki bar?

Kurt- Not sure, it’s always changing and evolving.  Maybe one day we’ll switch our waterfall out for a volcano.

Anything else you would like to add?

Kurt- I think a fun question should be “how far have you driven to buy something you saw online?”

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